Posted
by
kdawson
on Tuesday May 04, 2010 @04:21AM
from the y'all-come dept.

longacre writes "Cape Wind is making headlines for being the first offshore wind farm to earn federal approval, but it still has plenty of legal hoops to jump through before groundbreaking. Texas, on the other hand, requires no review — state, federal, or otherwise — to build wind farms off its shore. Texas energy expert and Popular Mechanics senior editor Jennifer Bogo talks to Texan energy leaders who are confident they will beat Cape Wind to the punch for the distinction of having the first functional US offshore wind farm. 'I was about to write a press release to congratulate Cape Wind for getting their approval,' says Jim Suydam, press secretary of the Texas General Land Office, 'and let them know when they're done jumping through hoops up there they can come build off the Texas Coast.' Despite its reputation as an oil-addicted, non-environmentally-friendly, conservative state, Texas's existing land-based wind farms actually produce four times more electricity than California's."

Texas understands a simple principle: oil isn't forever. They have the money now, and can invest in wind, and other alternatives, so that when it runs out, they have another source of income, and a backup energy supply. Dubai is trying for a similar move, building what they hope is the Middle East's Singapore, but may have overdone it a tad.

Living in the UK for the last year, I've seen a lots of investment in wind here. On the horizon here in Edinburgh, there's a pretty substantial wind farm. Flying back home I noticed there's another large one in the waters between Ireland and Wales.

Well, speaking from the ancient engineer's viewpoint, I would be willing to bet that turbines design was killed not by the designing engineers stupidity, but by some bean counter that removed the feather-able blades feature to control its ultimate rpms. Since that is a fairly complex mechanism, they were 40% cheaper to build that way.

And of course all the engineers were fired when the design was done, so the bean counters were free to do as they damned well pleased, which was to screw up what was probably a

they do however kill sheep, the noise keeps them awake until they die. the sound may or may not have an effect on fish and dolphins, we don't know yet. also fossil fuel is forever, check out a work called "deep, hot, biosphere"

Considering the article is specifically talking about offshore windfarms, I don't think that we need to be too concerned about any sheep who happen to be close enough to hear them.

And I'd like to see some sort of citation to back up your claim. I realize that sheep are dumb (very, very dumb), but I grew up (and live) in a rural state which has a good bit of sheep farming. I've never heard of the ranchers having any problems with sheep dying due to lack of sleep even on ranches which are right next to major highways which produce a much higher level of noise even at night. In addition, we have several wind farms around the state, and there are some which actually exist ON sheep ranches, with no effects.So wherever you got your information, it was either flat out wrong, or there was something else bothering the sheep.

Dunno about sheep, but wind-farms DO kill bats. The blades attract them, and the pressure difference as they fly by can pop their lungs. And Texas is a big state for bat colonies, so it's been a real problem in some areas.

[wind farms] do however kill sheep, the noise keeps them awake until they die
Care to give a citation for that? Sounds pretty odd to me. One sees sheep near railways, major roads, the sea etc, all of which make noise 24 hours of the day, with varying degrees of intermittency.

This is hilarious, considering that the domestic turkey and the wild turkey, considered one of the wiliest and most difficult to bag of all game birds, are the SAME SPECIES. But if you catch some wild turkeys and feed them for a while, they'll act the same as domestic ones.

The difference seems to be whether they're used to being fed and protected, or are used to having to scrounge their own dinner and avoid predators on their own. Birds are very reactive, and if there's nothing to react to, they simply DON'

...oddly enough the ranchers in West Texas don't seem to mind the big turbines either.

They don't kill livestock and they generate income.

It's hard to argue against a paycheck.

The "cowboy mentality" in Texas means that there will be less red tape involvedin all of this and that any deployments are for purely economic reasons. The wholething will at least seem to make practical sense for all involved.

It won't be some do-gooder crusade bogged down by people that thing government should by your nanny.

Knowing how windmills (and in particular windfarms) work, I wonder how Texans have solved the issue of overproduction ? I mean any sucker can buy a few hundred windmills from Vestas. But this type of energy is not "on demand" capable, like nuclear, coal og oil based electrical production is. Even hydropower can be scaled and "stored" up to a point.When you get a huge terrawatt windfarm, you NEED to be able to harness (and use) all of that energy, even at night, and that means either inefficient storage, or

Considering the energy will be "wasted" otherwise, the fact that your storage is inefficient really doesn't matter.

It does effect the 'break even' point for a energy generation solution though.

Building the storage solution costs money, after all. A more efficient storage system would be able to transfer more power from the wasted peak generation points during demand valleys to deman peaks - resulting in you needing less generation capability in the first place. That's where the money is saved in order to make the storage system worth it.

If you amortize the cost of a wind turbine/solar panel and come up with X cents/kw

Texas has a fully deregulated electric grid. Not unlike what California tried to do, but with safeguards against the kind of shenanigans Enron pulled. Add to this, it's almost completely isolated from the rest of the country. Last I heard there were three interconnects. They're building a fourth superconducting DC interconnect up near Amarillo, specifically to export panhandle wind energy to NM and the western US grid.

All this wind power has had some interesting side effects. A couple months ago I was

Windfarms produce during day and night. While they may have more power at certain times than others windfarms across the country networked together could meet our total production needs. While yes, they would be producing more energy than necessary, there is nothing dangerous about disconnecting a group of windfarms if we are producing too much power. Or you could use the extra energy to produce hydrogen for use in various fuelcell applications.

Even dams take turbines off line while spilling water. But the problem is the same with nukes, coal power plants, and gas fired power plants. AC electricity doesn't store, you have to convert it to DC. So basically you take units offline or switch power from one region to another. Power switching can be tricky, you need well designed grids and heads up operators. In any case, you usually end up with units off line "wasting" the power generation potential.

almost no one burns oil for electricity anymore, they burn coal. i don't know why all the fucktards above are talking about oil spills. it's not related.

The more renewable electricity energy available then the cheaper it will be to charge an electric car. Less gasoline cars = less oil used. Lower oil requirements translates to lower possibilities of oil spills. At least, that's how I interpret their optimism. I certainly hope they are right.

I makes me sick to think that only accidents and toxic spills are motivating factors to business and governments, but let's make the most out of this if it can benefit "mother earth" in the long run.

As well in MA the spot where a lot of "rich family" democrats live. In essence the people who give democrats a bad name. They are opposed to these windmill as it is effecting their views of the cape. They are ok with alternative energy just as long as it is in poor peoples areas. The Texians have more of a independant personality. If you do it on your land it is your issue. If I can see your land then I am too close to you.

I noticed there's another large one in the waters between Ireland and Wales
That would be North Hoyle [wikipedia.org] and Rhyl flats. The UK has an advantage when it comes to building these things: the seas around it are shallow. Texas may have a similar advantage actually, I'm not sure how deep the Gulf is. California is less lucky: the Pacific gets quite deep quite quickly as you head away from the shore.

In Texas, because we don't care about the environment, we're actually able to do things that are good for the environment [..] It's the most ironic, preposterous situation. If you want to build a wind farm, you just build it.

You know, it's easy to mock Texans (from a safe distance) but there's a fully fledged bastard of a good point here. Regulation doesn't produce things. Government doesn't make anything. By and large, government just means worthless expense, and pointless obstruction.

Given the choice between trusting The People, or trusting that small subset of The People who live by taxing the rest of us and telling us what's good for us, I think I'm going to have to call it for The People.

In Texas, because we don't care about the environment, we're actually able to do things that are good for the environment [..] It's the most ironic, preposterous situation. If you want to build a wind farm, you just build it.

You know, it's easy to mock Texans (from a safe distance) but there's a fully fledged bastard of a good point here. Regulation doesn't produce things. Government doesn't make anything. By and large, government just means worthless expense, and pointless obstruction.

Given the choice between trusting The People, or trusting that small subset of The People who live by taxing the rest of us and telling us what's good for us, I think I'm going to have to call it for The People.

Unlike the parent, I might have a wind turbine set up 'next' to my house as I live in a very small town, but Texas has the advantage over California in that they have both a lot fewer regulations outside of urban areas and a lot of available range/farmland. Where you'd logically place a wind farm, after all. I don't see a lot of regulations needed to keep wind turbines out of cities. You still have lots of basic safety rules - and most municipal

Exactly.. an example of regulation that actually DOES work, as opposed to many examples of regulation that do not.

What needs to be done... anywhere... is to define the specific zones in which wind farms would be acceptable, and be sure enough of those zones exist to make the operation feasible. Obviously, nobody is going to put a windfarm in a residential area, but there is a lot of farmland and empty space out there which would be perfectly acceptable and won't really bother anyone.

Two differences in Texas are that A> what's left undeveloped is mostly desert or its close equivalent and B> Texans don't give a shit about endangered animals. If you bring 'em up in conversation you're likely to be told "Stop Talking Californian". My lady and I both have [separate] experience with this particular phenomenon. Persistence is likely to be met with the old three-people-in-a-balloon joke, except it's three people in the bar, and the Texan shoots the Mexican and the Californian. In Califor

Actually, a lot of the Texas wind potential is up around Lubbock & Amarillo. Not exactly desert, but not far from it. It's actually the one of the biggest cotton producing regions in the US. The farmers are used to the concept of leasing out the "energy rights" of their land, and providing access to contractors to perform work, etc... Driving a tractor around a jack pump and a windmill is pretty the same thing.

Much of Texas is not limited by zoning regulations. Take Houston [businessweek.com] for example. Outside the cities, who cares? In smaller towns, the mayor and city council members are your neighbors and really don't care to bother you unless someone else complains about something. Even then, you probably know who the busy body is so there's not a whole hell of a lot of that going on. No zoning works in Houston because no one is going to build a wind farm in a big city because land is too expensive. People build houses

I heard the same thing when wind power came here about 10-15 years ago, and I still say: I'd rather have a wind farm next to my house than a nuclear power plant, an oil power plant or a coal power plant.

I'd rather have the nuclear plant, personally. Yay Jobs!!! Followed up by the wind farm. Oil/Coal? I'd probably end up moving.

Hmm... How to put it: For a power plant/farm of the same capacity, much less production, a whole lot more people are going to be living 'next'(IE in sight of) to the wind farm as they would to the nuclear plant.

Add in that a modern nuclear plant might actually be safer - toss up enough wind towers to replace the power a nuke plant produces and you're getting into statistical pos

Throw in a cell phone tower too, preferably ON my land with the usual lease. Set up the construction compound nearby (we need the jobs and have a decent workforce). Our community college can do workforce training (WIA 4 teh win!) to support any business. I'll get with the local development board, the mayor, and anyone else who might be useful. I shit you not, bring it on.

Sorry, there's no room, since I already live within spitting distance of the largest onshore wind farm in Europe [wikipedia.org]. And I love it. There's no noise from the turbines - unless you physically stand under them - and I think they're elegant and quite beautiful. How can you hate something with a "nacelle" on it?

Talk about jumping to wild conclusions based on next to no evidence, but firmly ensconced in ideological clap trap.

There are innumerable examples of governments "making things". As we are talking about electricity generation I will point out the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Scheme in Australia, built by the Australian government and operated to this day by a wholly government owned corporation. It is the largest engineering project ever undertaken in Australia and frequently cited as an example of civil engineering excellence.

In scope and difficulty, putting up some wind turbines is just not in the same league.

Regulation doesn't produce things. Government doesn't make anything. By and large, government just means worthless expense, and pointless obstruction.

Ah yes . the myth of the "Free Market is best" argument. Simplistic, naive and dangerous.

A totally free and unregulated market gives you the Thalidomide, the Ford Pinto, lead paint in children's toys, contaminated pet food and (the latest one) contaminated Chinese dry wall. Why should the government regulate things, as after all the market will sort things out eventually.

Who cares about the damage done to the consumer between the the time a company enters a market and the time people realise that somet

Regulation may not produce things, but it helps prevent The People as you like to call them from getting Ripped Off, such as during the California electricity crisis [wikipedia.org]. Your point about "worthless expense and pointless obstruction" caused by regulations sounds particularly stupid in the light of the current events going on in the Gulf of Mexico. I think I'd rather trust people who are accountable to the population than some faceless multinational to look for my interests, thank you very much.

Regulation may not produce things, but it helps prevent The People as you like to call them from getting Ripped Off, such as during the California electricity crisis.

Bad example. The Wikipedia article you linked to explains what happened:

The major flaw of the deregulation scheme was that it was an incomplete deregulation--that is, "middleman" utility distributors continued to be regulated and forced to charge fixed prices, and continued to have limited choice in terms of electricity providers. Other, less catastrophic energy deregulation schemes, such as Pennsylvania's, have generally deregulated utilities but kept the providers regulated, or deregulated both.

The California electricity crisis is an example of the chaos that partial deregulation creates. Total regulation may be better, but you still get the socialist calculation problem [wikipedia.org]. In other words, without prices, bureaucrats will make arbitrary decisions that create an un

Oh, drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is unregulated? Sorry, I thought that it happened despite regulation. I guess that totally invalidates my point about regulation being an expensive waste of time. You win two Internets!

They can discourage people from doing things that are bad but would be profitable to do

They can encourage people to do things that are good but are not profitable (in the short term) to do

Unfortunately they often add so much bureaucracy that it discourages people anyway....and the people who can afford to pay people to work around the bureaucracy are the ones who need stopping from going for the bad short term gain....

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating breakfast of US Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time as regulated by the US Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory. I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to send via the US Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After work, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to a house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all it's valuables thanks to the local police department.

I then log on to the internet which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration and post on freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.

\For example. why should I start my own competition to the NOAA, to provide for a cost, something which the NOAA provides for free?

You're right. Something like The Weather Channel would never work.

It's dumb to attempt to compete with government monopolies that don't need to make a profit and can undercut you (or sometimes even prohibit you from operating in the first place, such as duplicating the services of the US Postal Service).

FedEx? What a crazy idea. You can't complete with the US Postal Service. You sure as heck can't have multiple players in that market like UPS and DHL either.

Given the choice between trusting The People, or trusting that small subset of The People who live by taxing the rest of us and telling us what's good for us, I think I'm going to have to call it for The People.

And by "The People" you mean large corporations with substantial amounts of cash.

Yep, screw drinking water regulations, the FDA, nuclear power plant safety standards, hospital hygiene standards, civil engineering regulations etc. It's just holding back those good old free-market guys who want to sell people dirty water, poisonous food (eg. milk with melamine in it), dangerous power plants, dirty hospitals and structurally unsound buildings. After all, they didn't have to buy it! Never give a sucker an even break, right?

Government doesn't make anything. By and large, government just means worthless expense, and pointless obstruction.

Not directly, but without it you have anarchy which ensures NOBODY produces anything. Try looking outside your navel, can you find ANY country with a weak goverment that is not a poverty stricken shit hole?

The problem in the US is not over-regulation, it's corruption. The cape project basically had to wait for a powerfull NIMBY politician to die, and when he did, hey presto the SAME regulations are no longer a barrier. That one person should have the power to distor

It doesn't "chill" me. I want the Blue states to regulate themselves into a corner and push business and development elsewhere.

Except the book isn't about states rights. Its about people abusing the rights of others in order to further their nimby desires. This is not a red/blue states issues and I suggest you actually read the book

Oh. Wait. It's "Green". That makes it ok. Only climate denialists ever oppose anything Green. But does Texas subsidize these wind farms? If not they are still evil. It's Texas,after all. We have to find something evil in everything they do.

I'm interested to see what slashdotters have to say about this report [consumerenergyreport.com], which says wind energy makes coal plants have to run intermittently rather than at steady state, which causes more pollution than just getting all the power from coal in the first place.

I'd say, first of all this is pitch by the natural gas industry to build many more gas-fired power plants. And this is not an accusation, or an inference, or a suspicion, if you read the TFA this is exactly what the report is and claims to be.

That being the case, their methods of analysis could use some critical outside examination.

Second, the daily power load already has a 30% day night variation that is largely handled by coal plant throttling already, and coal plants spend about 6% of their time in unplanned outages (planned outages are extra). Wind power won't contribute any additional significant variation over a grid that already has to adapt to fluctuating supply and demand until it exceeds the 10% level. Since this already routine, and independent of wind power, I suspect that this coal throttling issue is already well understood and likely to minimized with further plant improvements

Third, the gas industries suggestion is actually a good one. Bringing more gas peaking plants online would be a good way of improving grid load handling, if they displace coal (it also somewhat less carbon intensive).

Fourth, this is actually an example of a repsonsible criticism to wind power, even if the claim is exaggerated or wrong. It points out a potential problem, and proposes a viable solution. This is how potential problems are dealt with - you identify them and you plan to address them.

And fifth - all of FUD I seen thrown at wind power (and most of what I see thrown at solar, or electric cars) is based on the absurd proposition that their will be no other changes -- to the distribution grid, to power balancing, etc. - to accommodate the introduction of wind. This is basically taking the first half of point four, and pretending nothing can be done to fix it. It is certain that there will be many changes in the national power system going on in the years ahead.

We're talking about a state that used the wrong glue on the big dig to deadly results. Hell, when they were painting the lines for RT 24 they used the wrong paint. (They managed to find a paint that eats asphalt. You should see it, all these gouges up a couple miles of highway everywhere there used to be a white line. I wonder how much that cost to fix.) Yeah, against that I figure Texas has a really good shot at having the first working offshore wind plant. (Yes, I live in Massachusetts.)

'I was about to write a press release to congratulate Cape Wind for getting their approval,' says Jim Suydam, press secretary of the Texas General Land Office, 'and let them know when they're done jumping through hoops up there they can come build off the Texas Coast.'

Is this really the best time [dallasnews.com] to be bragging about lax regulation of offshore energy production in Texas?

Not only do they have a fair amount of wind, it tends to be consistent and no extreme.

Other places have higher winds, but they can damage the turbines. Other places have steady winds but they are interspersed with calm periods.

I went to W. Texas a few years ago and there seemed to be a steady stream of trucks carrying turbine parts down the roads. I heard of land owners forming associations (a "Wind Union" so to speak) to negotiate with the power generation companies for better leases.

I still wonder that the technology-oriented/. crowd doesn't understand a major problem with almost all energy sources. The source of wind power (wind energy) is NOT "safe" energy. Removing energy from the wind affects climate, migration, pollination, seeding, and probably other factors I haven't considered.

...

Only solar energy has a chance at being "safe".

You do realise that Wind energy is solar energy? So it doesn't matter how you pull the energy out of the system, you are still pulling it out.

Wouldn't that make it stellar in stead of solar? Unless the sun have gone nova since I last checked *looks out of the window* No, it is still shining. So if it has gone nova, it is less then 8 minutes ago.

Wouldn't that make it stellar in stead of solar? Unless the sun have gone nova since I last checked *looks out of the window* No, it is still shining. So if it has gone nova, it is less then 8 minutes ago.

The question is, does it matter if we pull out the solar energy before it turns to wind energy or will the lack of wind energy be harmful. It's one thing to take energy from wind that's already blowing around but different than taking it before it blows.

Have you ever compared the amount of solar energy falling on the planet with human energy usage? I don't know the exact figures but its a tad biased towards the solar energy side of numbers.